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Building Global Arms Accountability:
First Committee Calls for Weapons Tracing

By: Melissa Gorelick

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The steel barrel is born in a deafening factory in Eastern Europe, its sleek casing fitted along an assembly line. A spinning cylinder and a spring trigger appear beside it; it is buffed, packed and closed into a box, like thousands before it and thousands after. However, somewhere between its first march on the shoulder of a national guardsman and its final resting place, this weapon is likely to disappear. It will be repackaged and traded for cash, then travel over rugged dirt roads in the back of a truck, becoming one of the world's most dangerous commodities: a silent, untraceable killer, sold to the highest bidder.

Reproduced with permission from Michael Hallowes, "Marking and Record-keeping Systems and Modalities of Operation" in UNIDIR and SAS, The Scope and Implications of a Tracing Mechanism for Small Arms and Light Weapons, 2002.

In conflict zones around the world, weapons like this make strange bounty for local authorities and peacekeepers. Ranging from handguns to automatics and anti-tank guns, small arms and light weapons (SALW) are a major component of illicit armies and a main target for police. But for peacekeepers and military officers, confiscating a stock of weapons is hardly a sustainable victory. For every Uzi found, hundreds more exist; for every stockpile discovered, another will arrive on the black market.

For the last decade, the United Nations has led the international community in developing policies to stop the spread of black market weapons at its roots. "Small arms and light weapons kill many people every year, as opposed to weapons of mass destruction; that is why the issue is so important at the UN", said Shutaro Omura of the Permanent Mission of Japan to the United Nations, co-sponsor of the resolution on the illicit trade in small arms and light weapons in all its aspects. "The UN provides a forum for how to systematically and effectively deal with the issue of small arms."

Owen Greene, Director of the Centre for International Cooperation and Security (CICS) at the United Kingdom's University of Bradford and a former UN consultant on small arms, leads the Centre's research in identifying better ways to confront the illegal weapons trade. The challenge is an especially difficult one, he explained, because most illicit SALW were at one time legally produced. Unable to target the legitimate sources of weapons, policies have instead focused on their point of departure from the legal market. "The priority is to enable tracing of weapons that go astray", he said.

Tracing weapons through permanent physical markings engraved directly into the weapon's body has become the international standard in stemming the flow of black market weapons. A marking branded onto a weapon during production or as it is imported into a country, can create accountability for its creator or those who sold the weapon illegally. In 2001, the United Nations adopted two major documents dealing with the tracing of weapons: the Protocol against the Illicit Manufacturing of and Trafficking in Firearms, Their Parts and Components and Ammunition (UN Firearms Protocol) and the Programme of Action to Prevent, Combat and Eradicate the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All Its Aspects. A group of government experts created by the Programme made significant headway in 2003, when it reported that it was both feasible and desirable to mark weapons for tracing. Since then, successful tracing policies have been addressed by a multitude of bodies, including regional groups, UN organs and expert groups.

Despite the flurry of activities over the past decade, results in tracing arms into conflict zones have been poor. According to Dr. Greene, this is because tracing weapons is about more than just engraved markings-it requires that States keep detailed records of their weapons and respond to inquiries of other States as well. "Until recently, there were no international agreements that clarified the responsibilities for tracing mechanisms", he said. States were free to mark up, record and respond to queries as they saw fit--a problem that would only be solved by a major paradigm shift in the international community.

Enter the first UN resolution designed to foster international cooperation on arms tracing, adopted in December 2005. The International Instrument to Enable States to Identify and Trace, in a Timely and Reliable Manner, Illicit Small Arms and Light Weapons, which addressed for the first time weapons sold en masse to conflict zones, called for States to keep records for a minimum time period and to submit to the United Nations contact information for trace inquiries. Both of these seemingly small changes enable cooperation and accountability in arms production, said Dr. Greene. "That's the real innovation of this tracing mechanism." Delegations at the at the sixty-first session of the General Assembly considered the Instrument a success, according to Mr. Omura, and adopted a resolution that called on States to implement it. "The Instrument is one of the most important achievements of the First Committee and the United Nations in the effort to stop the killing by small arms and light weapons", he said.

As weapons tracing has become a top priority regionally and internationally, a paradigm shift has occurred. Experts like Dr. Greene and Glenn McDonald of the Small Arms Survey, an independent research group based in Geneva, said that most producers today will mark their weapons as a matter of course and even have a selfish interest in proper marking and record-keeping, as it is a way to clear their names when weapons go astray. However, those concerned with enforcing the innovative tracing mechanism face major obstacles. Marking weapons at their point of production is a key feature of the UN Programme of Action, but marking them at the point of import-a major area of international contention-is not. And, most importantly, the Programme and its follow-up resolutions have not been made legally binding. As legal ratification is difficult and can take years, the United Nations opted instead to make the documents politically binding, meaning they are, at their core, only voluntary. Member States are called upon to report to the Organization on their own compliance.

Experts in SALW are hoping for another shift in the international climate-this time on implementation. Faced with voluntary standards, States are only likely to implement the Programme's initiatives if others have already done so. To this end, both CICS and the Small Arms Survey continue to work closely with the United Nations. The Survey, for example, published in the fall of 2006 a study on weapons brokering-a new focal point in conflict-zone management-and is looking into compliance from States. "The key challenge now is to take that framework and make sure it's implemented", said Mr. McDonald. "Enforcement really depends on practical measures."

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